


Welcome To The Cruel World

by silverlining99



Series: Hunters [1]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-02
Updated: 2010-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:03:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverlining99/pseuds/silverlining99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim, a bar, shared drinks, a scruffy doctor with tales of marital woe... and then there's the matter of the succubus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome To The Cruel World

**Author's Note:**

> First in a crossover series in the _Supernatural_ universe, but Trek characters only.

It takes him weeks to realize it, but Jim Kirk's life changes the night an exhausted guy with something against shaving stomps into his favorite watering hole, glances around, and announces, "Who here can tell me about succubi?"

A brief silence falls, most of the patrons scattered through the room letting the bizarre demand sink in before returning to their conversations. Jim looks up from his drink long enough to catch Chris's eye over the surface of the bar. "What're you, putting ads in the paper now?"

"Word spreads," Chris says shortly. "I'll knock a hundred off your tab if you take care of this."

Jim knows full well Chris has no intention of ever calling in a dime of that debt. He also knows he owes the man for far more than free-flowing alcohol. "Yeah," he mutters. He glances down to where the bedraggled new arrival has just slid onto a stool at the end of the bar and is waiting for Chris to come down. "I'm gonna need provisions."

Chris frowns at him, but produces a fresh bottle of whiskey and two glasses. "Thank you."

"Anytime." Jim hops off his stool and makes his way slowly down to the corner bend, where he sits diagonal and plunks one glass down in front of the stranger. "Usually a guy asks a question like that," he says blandly, "turns out to be nothing but nightmares."

That earns him an impressive scowl that twists the guy's mouth and eyebrows in annoyance. "Oh, I've got your nightmares all right," he mutters. "Only trouble is I'm wide awake for 'em all."

Jim notes the haunted look in his eyes and pours out a generous splash of whiskey for them both. Whatever shit this guy has stumbled into, it's no joke. "Jim Kirk," he offers. "What is it you want to know?"

"Leonard McCoy," he gets in response. "I wanna know what they are, how you find 'em, and most of all how you put 'em down."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Jim leans his elbow on the bar and tries to figure out how to walk this dude back from the brink of sheer idiocy. "Why don't we start with what happened and take it from there?"

"Fuck you, kid," McCoy snaps. "You have the information I need or not?"

"Hey, for all I know you're a delusional whack job looking for creative ways to deal with a clingy mistress. Spill or my lips stay sealed."

McCoy gives him nothing but hunched-over silence for a long minute. Finally, he shrugs out of his jacket, slings it over the stool next to him, and throws back his entire drink. He pushes the glass forward with two fingers. "My wife," he says shortly. Jim pours and waits. "She was -- *is* a succubus."

"Yeaaaaaah," Jim says slowly. "No. She's not. But hey, I'll bite. What makes you think so?"

"For starters? The small fact that she *said* she was before her eyes went black, she flung me across the room without laying a hand on me, and she took off with our -- *my* daughter." Jim sits up straight and McCoy eyes his warily, suspiciously. "What?"

"What did she say? *Exactly*, tell me what she said."

"I-- she'd just given birth. She wanted to deliver at home, insisted on it. I'm a doctor, I--" McCoy shudders and gulps his second round. "I went to clean up and when I came back she was already up and dressed and picking up the baby, and I asked what the hell she was doing and she said-- she said she was taking her. She said I should consider myself lucky, that succubi drain better men than me dry but she wanted a child of her own this time. She said she would let me live, for giving that to her."

"Huh." Jim mulls that over for a second, then shoves the entire bottle of whiskey at McCoy. "Here, go to town. Chris!"

Chris looks unhappy about it, but joins them and leans in close. "Possessed wife," Jim explains. "Says it claimed to be a succubus out for a kid to call her own."

"Cambion, huh."

"By a succubus, though?" Rubbing his jaw, Jim squints and racks his brain. "I've never heard of that."

Chris snorts. "You're young yet, Jim. There've been stories, yeah. It's happened before, once or twice."

"The kids?"

"Don't know. Anything else?"

"Nah." Jim waves him off and steals the bottle back, takes a long swig straight from it. "So I guess she could have been telling the truth. Including the part about you being lucky, by the way. Let it go."

"Not a chance," McCoy growls. "Look, kid, it took me six goddamn weeks to find info that seemed more legit than a bunch of cracked out kids sharing vampire fetishes on ugly message boards. I was told I might find someone with answers here. Are you that someone or aren't you?"

Jim sighs. He suddenly wishes he hadn't decided to wait the night before heading out on his next hunt. "I'm *a* someone," he hedges. "We pass through. Chris there, he keeps the lights on for us and all, just doesn't like to get involved anymore."

"Involved in what?"

"In the kind of shit that makes what you've been through look like a walk in the park," Jim says rudely. "You think your sob story is special, McCoy? It's not. Be grateful you're still alive and move on. You'll be happier for it, I promise you."

"Can the lecture and tell me something useful, would you? Why are you so surprised by this?"

"Not how it usually works, is all. Succubi and incubi generally work in their natural forms, which -- they're not *alive*, McCoy. They can't create life on their own. When they want to they work together as intermediaries between two humans."

"Intermediaries."

"Yeah, like, in tandem? Sort of a bucket brigade getting in the way of the normal sperm-egg delivery mechanism, if you catch my drift." Jim says the last bit with an obscene gesture of his hands, and McCoy glares. "Not really straightforward or anything, but whatever works, you know?"

"I don't know, actually, why the *fuck* do you think I'm here listening to you prattle on?"

"Right. Okay. So if what I think happened is what *actually* happened, your chick has gone off the reservation a bit. She possessed a *living* woman and held on tight while she got you to marry her, knock her up, and see her all the way through to delivering a little demon critter. Sort of impressive, once you really think about it." Jim shrugs at the increasing malevolence of McCoy's expression. "What? I admire dedication."

McCoy braces his elbows on the bar and rubs his eyes. "Fine. So my wife is a demon with *work ethic*. Bully for her. That doesn't do shit to tell me why it did this. Why this way?"

Jim just shrugs again. "Fuck if I know. Maybe she's on a feminist crusade. Maybe she realized she has a fundamental objection to the inefficiency of the normal order of things. Shit, I don't know, maybe she just got *bored*. What do you want from me?"

McCoy's stool legs shriek against the floor as he stands abruptly. "All I want from you," he snarls, "is to know how to get my daughter back from that *thing*."

"Wait." Jim blinks. "You... you want the spawn?"

McCoy honestly looks like he's on the verge of killing Jim where he sits. "She's not spawn, damn it, she's my *kid*."

"I." Jim's mouth clicks shut for a second and he stares thoughtfully at McCoy. "Uh. Okay, you get that she's half demon, right? We haven't glossed right over that detail?"

Grabbing him by the front of the shirt, McCoy yanks Jim up and towards him, across the corner of the bar, and breathes sourly in his face. "Do I *look* like I give a damn about that?"

"No, but maybe you should," Jim snaps, shoving him away. "She won't be normal, McCoy. We're not talking about the precious little angel you thought you were having. She'll be *different*."

"How?" McCoy demands. "Will she be evil? Can you tell me here and now that she's a lost cause?"

Jim wants to say yes. He tells himself, again and again, just to say yes and stomp out the determined hope he's certain will wind up ending this poor bastard's life -- or worse. But the words won't come. "I don't know," he mutters at last. "I'm sorry, I just really don't know. But my gut says yes."

"Yeah, well." McCoy calms a little, breathes deeply. He settles back onto his stool and pours another drink. "My gut says otherwise." For a moment, he stares blankly down the distance of the room. "She was beautiful," he says quietly, like it's a confession. "Nothing that perfect can be evil."

Jim sighs, and sits, and reaches for the whiskey. "Hate to break this to you, man," he says, "but choosing to believing that could be the very thing that gets you killed."

McCoy just looks at him, and in a flash Jim understands that it's not a choice.

It's a necessity, and it's the only thing keeping him going at all.

"We're going to need another bottle," Jim says wearily.


End file.
